Thank to those who attended the Conversation Cafe, including members of Brighton and Hove U3A, yesterday at Jubilee Library, Brighton (one of the project partners is Brighton and Hove Libraries service). There was a good turnout with much to share on the theme of family memories of WWI with a number of the group bringing in artefacts, letters, maps and more of near and distant relatives who’d served or fallen during the Great War as you can see from the images on this page.
We also discussed the book we’d be reading as part of the project, the WWI related book A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie, which the group were on the whole, ambivalent about despite the good reviews from book sellers. Brighton featured in the book in a small way, but it also tackled big themes including colonialism, love, religion, war, class and more, which was a lot to process we felt! We will be moving onto our next Great War themed book kindly supplied by Brighton and Hove Libraries Service in February 2016.
The Research group from the Boys in the Plaque Project led by Ross Hammond also joined the group to talk about the information and photos unearthed about the aforementioned ‘Boys’ and what happened to them. Lots of intrepid detective work being done this year it seems, and really fascinating to hear the news.
Our next event is on Wednesday February 10th at Jubilee Library with Dr Chris Kempshall of the WWI in East Sussex project, who will speak to the group on this theme: http://www.eastsussexww1.org.uk/ Sessions are free and all are welcome.
In the meantime, here is a link to the Boys on the Plaque project blog, which has photographs of the plaque and a list of the names: https://boysontheplaque.wordpress.com/
This was mentioned yesterday by Project Manager Clare Hankinson who is based with partner Fabrica gallery.